Sotheby's

BILL Ruprecht is to stand down as chief executive, chairman and president of Sotheby’s as soon as they find a replacement.

Sotheby’s Geneva managed to grab the headlines when the Henry Graves Supercomplication set a record for a timepiece at auction.

Sotheby’s latest set of results show that they plan to raise the stakes even further at the top end of the market where competition is most intense.

Works by Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Alberto Giacometti and Amedeo Modigliani were the highlights of the latest series of Impressionist & Modern art series in New York.

The opening salvos have been fired in the court case centred on the version of Caravaggio’s ‘The Card Sharps’ which sold at Sotheby’s in 2006.

Paintings and objects from the estate of the late Mary Soames, the youngest daughter of Sir Winston Churchill, are to be sold at Sotheby’s in London.

Still Life, Vase with Daisies, painted by Vincent van Gogh at the home of his physician Paul Gachet just weeks before he died, carries an estimate of $30m-50m at Sotheby’s New York on November 4. It will be on view in London from October 12-18.

Sotheby's United Kingdom sales have outperformed all other global regions at auction for the year to date, according to figures just released.

Sotheby's have made their first foray into the wine retail market by opening their first wine store in Hong Kong.

Sotheby’s are to offer 400 works in nearly 300 lots by Man Ray on November 15 in Paris. The collection, property of the Man Ray Trust, includes photographs, paintings, drawings, jewellery, objects and film.

Beyond Limits is Sotheby’s annual outdoor exhibition of monumental sculpture in the historic gardens of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.

ALL 49 lots from the Murray Frum collection of Oceanic art found a buyer on September 16 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Paris. The hammer total was €6.24m (£5.2m).

Sold at Sotheby’s for £900,000 last month was a rare copy of a work that marks the beginning of printing in English.

Sotheby’s figures for the first half of 2014 saw a significant increase in auction totals help them to a 20% rise in operating income compared to the equivalent period last year.

Twelve years after their first online collaboration, Sotheby’s and eBay have formed a second partnership to stream Sotheby’s sales worldwide.

For some years now, Far Eastern buyers have been demonstrating their fascination with so-called ‘sing-songs’ – the elaborate 18th century automaton table clocks made for the Chinese market by paying ever-increasing sums to secure them.

Christie’s reported auction sales for the first half of 2014 of $3.6bn (£2.2bn), a 23% rise on the same period last year. Sotheby’s took $3.12bn (£1.9bn), a 22% increase.

While two of the top prices of the London auctions last week came for ancient sculptures – the £14m Old Kingdom Egyptian limestone statue at Christie’s and the £8.3m for the Roman marble of Aphrodite (c.41-54AD) at Sotheby’s – there was also a bumper run of Old Master and British picture sales.

Sotheby’s have secured the single-owner collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon, valued at more than $100m, for sale later this year in New York.

The total from last week’s Contemporary art auctions in London may have been a far cry from the record New York series in May where $1.57bn (£975m) of art changed hands, but there was still plenty of action as the market continued on its current buoyant course.